25 lakh people, just over 4,000 cops: Policing in Gurgaon is a story of this big gap

Since 2011, the city’s population is believed to have increased at the rate of 1.4 lakh people a year to touch 25 lakh currently. But the government has not been able to deploy enough policemen to maintain law and order. Police commissioner Sandeep Khirwar is, however, hopeful that three new police stations for the new sectors, being developed in collaboration with GMDA, will help improve policing in areas along SPR and Dwarka Expressway

| TNN | Feb 23, 2018, 13:38 IST

GURGAON: Since 2011, the city’s population is believed to have increased at the rate of 1.4 lakh people a year to touch 25 lakh currently. But the government has not been able to deploy enough policemen to maintain law and order.
Police commissioner Sandeep Khirwar is, however, hopeful that three new police stations for the new sectors, being developed in collaboration with GMDA, will help improve policing in areas along SPR and Dwarka Expressway.

In November last year, Sushil Kumar, a resident of Sector 110, was driving down the main internal road when a group of men tried to stop him in what he feared was a carjacking attempt. “I turned my car around and sped away. Had I stopped, they would have beaten me up and robbed me of all I had,” said Kumar. He filed an online complaint, only to face another such attempt a couple of weeks later.

Some months before that, in July, a household help was stopped, groped and assaulted by six men outside a residential society in Sector 69. Though she managed to flee their clutches with a bruised ear, locals claimed such incidents are frequent in this part of the city, essentially sectors along the Dwarka expressway.

That same month, three drunk men, apparently peeved about a long outage in the locality, had created a ruckus on the premises of Vatika India Next, a plotted colony in Sector 82. They blocked the gate even as around 70 residents were forced to wait outside the society in their cars for hours.

“There are drunk people walking and driving around all the time, but I haven’t seen a single cop patrolling the area in months. To make things worse, liquor shops are springing up like mushrooms everywhere,” said Zaheer Abbas, a resident of Sector 58, said.

And with no public transport other than shared autos where 15 or more passengers are packed together in the decrepit three-wheelers, commuting isn’t easy for residents of new sectors, particularly women. “There is no public transport in the new sectors. Hence, we need to rely on shared autos, which are not safe. I read about a woman being raped and her eight-month-old girl being thrown out of a moving auto in newspapers a few months ago… she was travelling in a shared auto around midnight (on May 29 last year),” said Rima Bajaj, a resident of Sector 82.

There are three police stations — Sector 37, Kherki Daula and Rajinder Nagar — to maintain law and order in sectors 80-115 along Dwarka expressway. But sources pointed out the available manpower was simply not enough to police these vast areas and check crimes.

“Sector 37 police station, which was opened around a year ago, is running with half the sanctioned manpower, that too with many personnel borrowed from nearby police stations,” claimed a source.

Policing the new sectors along Southern Peripheral Expressway and Dwarka expressway well is one of the biggest challenges for the state government because the picture in the rest of the city does not inspire much confidence. Between 2011 and today, the city is believed to have added at least 10 lakh people to its population (its current population, according to the district administration’s estimates, is around 25 lakh). That’s an average of 1.4 lakh people coming to live in the city each year since 2011.

In sharp contrast, the number of policemen in the city has inched up from 3,387 in 2011 to 4,335 in 2018, a total increase of around 1,000 personnel. It is well short of the sanctioned strength of 6,661 which in itself is grossly inadequate for a rapidly expanding city like Gurgaon.

The problem lies, residents claim, in the Gurgaon-Manesar Master Plan 2030. “In 2007, when the master plan was conceived to double the size of the city and bring another 15 lakh people under its fold, it was not linked with any plan to increase the number of police stations for new areas,” said Amit Saxena, a resident of Sector 70. “Sectors 58 to 76 along Southern Peripheral Road come under Badshapur police station, which is clearly struggling to tackle the situation,” he added.

Sandeep Srivastava, a resident of Sector 82, added, “The new sectors are lacking in many aspects; safety being the prime concern. No night patrolling, no police-resident meeting and confusion over jurisdiction are making things worse. If Gurgaon is a neglected child of Haryana, new sectors are no one’s baby.”

Gurgaon police commissioner Sandeep Khirwar admitted the law-and-order situation in the new sectors was a concern. Most of these areas are developing and are surrounded by large chunks of open land, which allow rogue elements to commit a crime and disappear.

“We have written to the state government, seeking approval for a police station in Sector 65. We are also preparing similar proposals for Sector 58 and Vatika City,” Khirwar said, adding the proposed police stations would be developed in association with Gurgaon Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA).

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